November 27
2010

The Tenth Big Damn Hero Gets to Be Ninth...and Called a Metal Baby Chicken?!
UGO's Jordan Hoffman has compiled a list of the top 100 spacecraft in movies, with our beloved mid-bulk transport pulling ninth place between Sunshine's Icarus II and "Antarea's Vessel" from Cocoon. Though the good Mr. Hoffman basically uses the entire blurb provided to him to remark about Serenity looking like metal poultry.

The list, covering quite a span of cinematic history, seems to name-check both the common crowd pleasers and the more esoteric when it comes to movie space travel options. The comments at the site relating to list mark down a few missing options but I have to note they're mainly big names in television space transport.

Oh, and in case you're wondering? Mal might have beaten Han Solo in the "Best Movie Smuggler" contest at Hal-Con, but Han's ride once again trounced the competition by getting the top slot on this list. Guess being armed and FTL-capable can sway a man's mind, huh?

This person does know what a chicken looks like, right? I mean, I can understand not seeing the firefly aspect of it (to be honest, I didn't see it right away either) but there's still nothing chicken-y about it.

I also thought the Alliance ships were fantastic. Especially that one that looked a futuristic city block.

To me, they were a callback to the James Blish series of Cities In Flight stories. Blish "invented" a device called the "spindizzy", which could lift an entire city off the surface of the Earth, and supply it with gravity and a force field to contain an atmosphere. Blish's story-verse contained all the cities of old Earth, flying through space and trading with each other.

Such grand old stories! They don't write them like that much any more.

To me, they were a callback to the James Blish series of Cities In Flight stories. Blish "invented" a device called the "spindizzy", which could lift an entire city off the surface of the Earth, and supply it with gravity and a force field to contain an atmosphere. Blish's story-verse contained all the cities of old Earth, flying through space and trading with each other.

Such grand old stories! They don't write them like that much any more.

Except as part of the fifth season of the new Dr. Who, which had various nations of the Earth becoming floating arks in space, looking for a new home ;D

I can see the chicken thing actually, you have to squint a bit but it's not insane IMO.

Lots of nice boats in there but also lots of very significant omissions due to the movie only limitation. Star Furies, the White Star, the Liberator, USS Defiant, the colonial Viper (Mk II natch) and of course, the TARDIS would all have to be in any comprehensive list of best sci-fi spaceships.

I can't believe how Milleniun Falcon always wins those things (except for Star Wars huge fan base).
Personaly, I would go with my childhood Battleship Yamato, Gloizer X.
But to live in, Only Enterprise or Red Dwarf.

I'd probably have to go with The Phoenix from Battle of the Planets (or if you want to be all purist, Gatchaman). I spent countless hours trying to perfect a model of that thing in Legos in the Olde Days before highly specialized building sets. It had another plane that was part of it's tail! It lit itself on fire! It was so cool! I don't think any other ship can quite compete with one's first love. (Alas, also a tv show. At least until the most-likely-abysmal movie comes out in 2011.)